This paper explores how five third-graders constructed meaning in three school-based literacy participation structures, also examining teachers' invitations and the space they make for students' talk and students' comprehension practices. High-stakes assessments and mandated reading curriculum influence how comprehension is framed and how students…

For four years, Pat Paugh, a university teacher educator, and Mary Moran, a teacher researcher, collaborated on action research by systematically studying literacy development connected to the latter's third-grade community gardening and urban farming curriculum. Their goal was to support an existing classroom culture that valued…

Welcome to the Pine Cone Wars, as enacted by Mrs. Kay's children in her urban first grade. The children brought these wars from the playground to the classroom, reformulating them within the possibilities and constraints of the daily writing time. The Pine Cone Wars thus illustrate the inevitable interplay between the official world we shape as…

In this article, the author shares the reflections of second graders at PS 11, an elementary school in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, on their identities as readers and writers through a photo essay. It is through these two mediums that they are coming to know themselves as learners and as human beings. One example of student comments is, Billy…

A set of field notes taken in second- and third-grade classrooms is presented as part of a statewide study of early literacy instruction. The coping strategies of two students as they attempt to overcome the boredom of the literacy practices at their school are discussed.